356
f'ALAsBARZ
are procurable. The public buildings include a dispensary and an
English middle school. The river steamers call regularly at Palasbari
.s ~aat.
Palasni.-Petty State in REWA KANTHA, Bombay.
PaMsvihir.-Petty State in the DANGs, Bombay.
Palaungs.-A Mon-Anam hill people, found mostly in the uplands
to the north of the Northern Shan States, and in the east of the
Ruby Mines District of Upper Burma. The Northern Shan State of
Tawngpeng may be looked upon as the centre of the Palaung country.
The majority of the inhabitants of the State are Palaungs, the Sawbwa
is a Palaung, and most of the scattered Palaung tribes found outside
the State claim to have come originally from within its limits. Among
the Shans the name for the Palaungs is Kunloi (`highlanders') ; their
name for themselves is Ta'ang. The main division of the people is
into Palaungs proper and Pales. The Palaungs proper are confined
to the country immediately surrounding Namhsan, the capital of
Tawngpeng ; all clans outside this limited area are, properly speaking,
Pales. No distinction was made between Palaungs proper and Pales
at the Census of igor. The total of Palaungs enumerated was 56,866,
of whom about half were inhabitants of the Northern Shan States. In
addition, about 7,500 were found in the `estimated' areas of North
H.senwi. The Palaungs are Buddhists, and very zealous in their
support of the priesthood. As a people they are peaceable and
retiring, and neither mix nor intermarry freely with their Shan neigh-
bours. The men have adopted the Shan dress; the women wear
ordinarily a jacket, skirt, hood, and cloth leggings. The full dress,
especially in the case of the Katurr and other pure Palaung clans, is
elaborate and very brightly coloured, velvet figuring largely in its com-
position. The distinctive feature of the Pale women's attire is the
skirt, striped horizontally in red and blue, the width of the stripes
varying, with the clan, from an inch to a foot or more. The Pale
woman's hood is ordinarily white, and smaller than the full-dress hood
of the Palaung. In some of the Pale clans living farthest from
Tawngpeng no hood is worn by the women; occasionally the head-
dress is a bag, not unlike a stocking cap, into which the head is
inserted. Coiffure varies; in full dress girls occasionally wear their
hair over their shoulders; the Kwanhai women part their hair in the
middle; in almost every clan a considerable proportion of the elderly
females are close-cropped. The Palaungs build their villages almost
invariably at a considerable elevation above the ground. Their houses
are sometimes of a very large size and accommodate several families.
They practise taungya (shifting cultivation), but are best known for
their culture of tea, for which the hills of Tawngpeng and the surround-
ing country are admirably adapted. The greater part of the indigenous